The return trip to the surface was surprisingly simple. Cradling the Monster Core like a newborn child, Rory and Apostolos waited as a glimmering disc of crackling blue lightning began to circle overhead before slamming down into the building they stood upon, the entire structure shimmering.

  And then they were gone, standing outside the Maw.

  “Huh.” Apostolos looked around, frowning. “Nighttime. That sucks.”

  “Ehh, you’ll live,” Rory said with a partial shrug. “Quite the adventure, am I right?”

  “I think I would have preferred to remain on the surface,” Apostolos muttered. “Still, I guess it was interesting enough. Though, I’m not sure I understand how space works anymore.”

  “Me either,” Rory agreed. Magic cutting through space was one thing, yet what he’d seen was something else entirely, the ability for space to compress and shrink without distorting physical space itself as if the entire localized area was sheathed in a pocket realm. “Something to consider for the future, though,”

  “And you’ve got that look in your eyes,” Apostolos snorted, a light flickering into existence hanging just in front of them, their own tiny sun lighting up the way. “Does everything have to be some big science experiment?”

  “Not everything,” Rory shook his head, frowning momentarily. “Just most things. Hell, even in our old universe, I was always a curious type. You don’t end up working in a lab being underpaid, shocking cadaver muscles, and screwing around with stem cells by accident. Hmm, stem cells. I wonder if-”

  “Master?”

  “Right, sorry.” Rory sighed, reining himself in. “Do you want to walk back, or…?”

  “Honestly, let’s just jog back. If the suns were out, I wouldn’t mind walking for an hour or two. As it’s nighttime, I just want to get back and sleep.”

  “I think I’d agree,” Rory concurred. “Well then, let’s go home.”

  Hmm. Oh, Susan, stop tickling my nose.

  Rory felt his nose tickle, senses slowly coming back to him.

  “Stop… embarrassing… not in front of my parents…”

  Still, the soft flicker tickling his nose didn’t subside.

  “C’mon,” Rory sighed, his eyes finally opening as he awoke from his slumber. He’d been having the oddest dream, Susan, a girl he’d crushed on as a kid, had been rubbing her nose against his own where his parents could see. It had been odd, given he hadn’t had a dream about the girl since he was sixteen years old-

  Huh?

  Waking up more by the second, Rory found himself blinking in confusion. Not trusting his eyes, he slowly reached his hands up to his face, rubbing his eyes.

  Still, his eyes proved truthful, the odd sight in front of him unchanging.

  “So… Not exactly a romantic wake-up,” Rory mumbled, staring at the snake two inches from his face, its tongue casually flicking and brushing against his nose. Compared to the last snake he’d dealt with, the snake now partially coiled atop him was absolutely diminutive, adorably tiny.

  Of course, being ‘adorably tiny’ when compared to a serpent the size of a redwood tree just meant that the snake atop him was only twelve feet long, thin like a garden snake with a head shaped like a clover, reminding Rory of the pet vine snake a buddy of his had owned back in college.

  It was the same shock blue as the lightning that had coursed through the Empyrion Serpent. However, it was their only similarity, the color shockingly pretty on what was otherwise a reasonably mundane-looking snake with no antlers or whiskers.

  “So… where the hell did you come from?” Rory questioned himself, musing his thoughts out loud. The serpent, having apparently gotten bored of flicking his nose with its tongue, drifted its head toward his hand. Opening its mouth, the serpent chomped down on his wrist, doing absolutely no damage whatsoever. If the snake was deterred, it seemed to show no signs of it, clamped on with no intent of releasing him.

  “Hey, Master, good to see you’re finally awake.” Rory heard Apostolos knocking on the doorframe of his hovel, having sensed the moment Rory’s energy shifted into a more alert state. “I was wondering if you could- is that a snake?”

  “Pretty sure,” Rory said noncommittedly.

  “And it’s just… taking a bite out of you?”

  “Yeah, looks that way.” Rory once more answered casually.

  “Shouldn’t you, oh, I don’t know, kill it?”

  “Probably,” Rory said. “But no real reason to, low-tier as it is, I’d receive nothing for the effort. Plus, it could chomp on me like this for a hundred years and still wouldn’t hurt me. That aside, it doesn’t feel like an act of aggression; it’s more like curiosity. Sharks are said to bite things out of curiosity, you know.”

  “But that’s a snake, not a shark.” Apostolos pointed out. “Also, are you sure it’s okay to let some random monster attack you?”

  “Well, I don’t see why not. It’s no more than a tier one or two. Honestly, my bigger question is where it came from. I don’t recall being followed.”

  Apostolos arched an eyebrow at Rory as his gaze drifted across the small hovel to land upon a shelf he’d made to store knickknacks. “Uhm, I think I know where it came from.”

  Following his former apprentice’s gaze, Rory found himself staring at where he’d placed the Monster Core, the item he’d been so excited to work with.

  It was now shattered, revealing a hollow interior.

  “You know… I don’t think I ever actually took the time to examine the monster core, in hindsight…” Rory mumbled as he glanced at the curious serpent clamped onto his wrist. “Explains the biting.”

  Aural Serpent

  Level: 14

  A serpent born not of typical reproduction, but the molding of aural affinities of a non-viable egg. Removed from its aura molding stasis, the Aural Serpent hatched before it was thoroughly imbued with the intended aura.

  “Well, several things make more sense now,” Rory muttered. He’d assumed the Empyrion Serpent had been unwilling to part with the monster core because it was essential to itself. While not incorrect, Rory was beginning to understand the whole picture. The semi-divine serpent had taken a non-viable egg, stored it within itself, and slowly shaped and formed it into what would be considered a monster core while still retaining the ability to hatch. In a way, it reminded Rory of his own experiments to transform a mundane tree into a bloodwood tree.

  The Empyrion Serpent, whose most prominent issue was that there was only one of it, had likely intended to hatch a species of snake related to itself, a sort of budding ‘clan’ that it could use to aid its goals.

  Perhaps the Blue Lightning Khan and I are made from similar stuff, both scientists at heart. Eh, I’ll learn more next time I visit.

  With the assistance offered by Rory and Apostolos, the Blue Lightning Khan had likely done the internal calculations needed to decide that their aid would be more valuable than trying to raise a snake hatchling for the time being.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  In essence, Rory had yet another child thrust upon him for his efforts at being a decent neighbor.

  I wonder if Aelia or Eon would let me file for child support.

  Removed early from the Empyrion Serpent, the snake that had hatched was marked but not stained from the aura of the great serpent. What it meant in the long run, Rory had no idea.

  “So… what are you going to do?” Apostolos asked, interrupting Rory’s ruminations.

  “What I always do. Adopt another stray into the fold.” Rory sighed.

  “You sure you shouldn’t….” Apostolos drowned off, instead miming as if he were tightening a wire around a neck.

  “First off, that’s horrible,” Rory pointed out. “Second, it’s a snake, not a toddler. Doesn’t really have a neck for that to work.”

  “Ehh, you basically did the same thing with your chains against that basilisk.”

  “Semantics,” Rory waved it off. “Anyway, you needed me for something?”

  “Yeah, I was going to ask some advice on Inscription. Can you whip up a script for focusing light?”

  “Yeah, probably?” Rory turned his eyes upward, thinking momentarily as several runes floated through his mind, a rough script spun up within seconds. “How refined do you need it?”

  “Preferably extremely novice level. I want to use it to build my foundation for when I model things myself, but I can’t do that if I barely understand the intent of the runes.”

  “Gotcha,” Rory said with a nod. Over a decade since he’d first invented Inscription, he’d created dozens, if not hundreds, of runes since then. However, he had avoided any serious runes ever since his ‘death’ that he’d only been saved from by Eon bailing his ass out. Even avoiding the far more dangerous-to-create esoteric runes, hundreds of basic to intermediatory runes were often enough for any given purpose. Apostolos had taken to learning some of the runes, yet without the Ancestral Inscription skill -Apostolos instead had basic Runic Inscription- learning runes was considerably more taxing on the young man, taking dedicated study to fully immerse himself in occupying the theoretical space a rune existed in before he could use it himself.

  It was one of the few instances where Rory had seen the difference between some of his skills and the more basic versions. That, and being the creator of a rune meant he naturally already occupied the theoretical mind space required to understand the rune.

  This was a rather fancy way of saying that while Rory didn’t dedicate nearly as much time to scripting new runes these days, he still had more than enough to fulfill Apostolos’s request.

  Standing up, Rory began to exit his hovel, snorting in amusement at the snake. Rather than release his hand, it slithered along after him, still clamped on like a trailing chord.

  Putting thoughts of the odd newborn snake aside, Rory soon found himself standing before their bound circle, a wooden carving of two rising suns inlaid with strips of stable steel placed within.

  “Interesting. Is this meant as a foci?” Rory crouched down, inspecting the totem.

  “Yeah, sort of. I got the idea from the War-Scythe about how you added runes to focus solar magic. By the way, I stole two basic crystals and put them inside the carvings as a minor vessel for small amounts of pneuma. That okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, I don’t care much about the basic crystals anymore.” Rory waved it off without concern. “So, what exactly is the purpose, or intended purpose?”

  “Well, I already said it was meant to focus solar energies as a basis to build my own foundations. What I mean is that over prolonged exposure to my own affinity and with runes meant to draw in solar energy, this totem will become perfectly attuned to myself, converting absorbed solar energies to match my own perfectly. It should facilitate remaking Radiant Embers in the future and give me something to practice manipulating energies that aren’t my own.”

  “Uh huh, interesting,” Rory said, growing disinterred. While it was a novel project for Apostolos, it was too short-lived for Rory, something that could have been whipped up in less than a month. Hell, he could already see a flaw with the intention; the totem would need to be updated every ascension to match Apostolos’s new status, requiring an update in runes, material, and even re-attunement for what was effectively just a way of streamlining the usage of solar energy that wasn’t strictly combat oriented.

  It’s not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination; it’s just not entirely up my alley. In fairness, given that I’m flesh and blood and my body isn’t made of Anima, that shouldn’t be much of a shocker either.

  Still, Rory wasn’t about to poo-poo his former apprentice’s work, so he quickly scratched a few runes into the wood, placing them where he felt they would best interact with the flow of energy through the crudely constructed totem. Satisfied that the work would match Apostolos’s current level and understanding, he dusted himself off.

  “There, that should be about what you’re looking for. Take a look and tell me if it seems good to you.”

  As Rory requested, Apostolos inspected the totem for several minutes before nodding.

  “Yeah, I think this will work. Thanks for taking the time to do this for me.”

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t much work,” Rory said with a shrug. “So, what are you up to now?”

  “Take a guess.”

  “Off to go find monsters to kill. You must be damn close to tier-six.”

  “With all the tier-six monsters and tier-fives from the third floor of the Maw, I’m about a year ahead of schedule. You could power level someone if you had them tag along like I did.”

  “You also have the benefit of not dying for real should shit hit the fan,” Rory pointed out. “Imagine the Empyrion Serpent decided to fight. You’d be dead in seconds.”

  “Fair,” Apostolos said, conceding the point. “Well, either way, tier-six is only around a year, maybe eight months off.”

  It was something Rory was glad to hear, if not surprising. The young man had been working hard, and it didn't hurt that he had what was probably the best weapon on the planet by a country mile.

  “Congrats, or well, sort of. You still have the last leg to cross, after all.”

  “Thanks,” Apostolos said, genuinely proud. “I’m a little afraid, though.”

  “Of?”

  “If I get an Ascension challenge like you did, I’m not sure I’ll be able to clear it.”

  “Nah, you’ll be fine. I’ll update your gear when the time comes. Between that and your scythe, you should be able to kill at least a base tier-6 monster. You’ll be hitting with some serious firepower, and I’ll make sure you’re clear for a straight one-versus-one. You won’t be facing a floor boss either, so that should hopefully help.”

  “Thanks,” Apostolos shot Rory a quick appreciative smile before glancing away. “Well, I’ve got to get back to killing more monsters. Tier-six won’t achieve itself.”

  “Yeah, yeah, no need to tell me,” Rory said, waving the young man off before being reminded that there was still a rather stubborn snake latched onto his wrist.

  “You sure you’ll be fine with that?” Apostolos pointed at the serpent.

  “Unless it suddenly leaps straight to tier-seven, yes, I’m fine. It will be nice to have company again since you spend so much time out of the camp.”

  Apostolos winced but didn’t bother to defend himself.

  “Now, get, I’ve got things to consider, and yapping away with you only distracts me.”

  Watching Apostolos leave, Rory sighed and went to the forge, where he crouched before the Forge Heart. Crouched down, Rory took a few moments to do nothing more than bask in the warmth of their tiny star, its radiance like a shot of hot chocolate straight to the spirit.

  Clearly, he wasn’t alone in that regard. Sensing the warmth of the nearby Stellar Heart, the snake finally released Rory, its arrow-shaped head turning to face the forge.

  “It’s nice, ain’t it?” Rory said, speaking to his new companion. “Took a shit load of time to build, and god damn was it not easy at times.”

  The snake was silent, unlike its sort-of patriarch.

  Speaking of.

  With the excitement of the tiny snake aside and Apostolos’s request, Rory had time to consider the tasks looming ahead of him. First was the task he’d set out awhile back, the final part of his three-step plan for preparing for the future, retrofitting their entire camp and bringing it up to an acceptable standard. In his mind’s eye, or his Mind Palace, Rory had blueprints and visions of transforming the somewhat sporadic and disjointed camp into a proper city, albeit tiny, an odd fusion between quaint village and modern sensibilities.

  Moving past that, or perhaps in tandem with that project, would be the new task he’d acquired, developing Aura Conduits for the Khan of Blue Lightning.

  How will I go about that?

  The most obvious would be using Solarite as the primary ingredient; it was the Solarite that the Empyrion Serpent had so positively reacted toward. The issue was it required Stellar Matter, and Stellar Matter was still a pain in the ass to gain an abundance of. Unless he wanted to shovel hundreds if not thousands of tons of dirt into the Stellar Heart, it required being fed with materials of higher grade if possible. Since they had gained complete claim of the second floor of the Maw, that was less of an issue, yet Rory still had to actively collect the materials. At one point, he had even played with the idea of setting up automatic extractors to ease the collection process. Still, the resources would need to be carted out of the Maw on something like a rail system, which would have also demanded resources, compounding the problem in the short term rather than fixing it.

  Project after project after project after project after project after project after project. Hot damn, what I would do for even a little help.

  He knew Apostolos would do it if he asked, yet that would only set him behind. Just as important as it was to work on the endless projects, it was also important that Apostolos reached a similar level to himself should either the Architect Bane or another founder appear.

  Unlike the Chosen Bane, the other founders are a problem for the semi-far future, but that still doesn’t change the validity of my statement.

  “What if I made robots?” Rory mused, glancing at the snake coiled in a pile of blue scales as near the forge as it could safely approach. “Hmm, no, stupid. Even with all the advancements I’ve made between Gem Crafting and Inscription arts, truly autonomous robots are still a bit of a pipe dream. An idea for the future, perhaps, but not the near future.”

  With the magi-tech machines of the last few years, he could produce larger quantities of resources than at any time in the past. Yet, it still paled compared to the daunting requirements of the future.

  Always something.

  Sighing, Rory stretched his arms overhead before he turned to inspect the ‘small’ serpent, the ‘mere’ twelve-foot-long serpent still enjoying the warmth of the forge.

  “Well, why don’t we learn more about you?”

  quite helpful.